Page 55 of Psychotic Faith
"Cleanup arrives in ten minutes," Nico announces. "Decide if you're staying or leaving."
Ten minutes before these bodies disappear. Before these men become nothing, their families never knowing what happened. No justice. No trial. Just absence.
"You destroyed my legal case," I manage. "Their testimony could have been crucial. The security footage they had access to, the records…"
"Would have meant nothing." Luca steps closer, and I smell death on him: copper and gunpowder. My body responds anyway, nipples hardening under my cardigan. "Best lawyers. Bought judges. He'd never see a cell."
He's right. I know he's right. But…
"This is what I am," Luca says softly, and for the first time, I hear something like regret in his voice. "This is what loving me means."
The word 'love' slaps me awake. Is that what this is? This dark, twisted thing between us?
"I have to go." I back toward the door, careful not to look at the bodies too closely. "I can't… I can't be here."
"Faith…" He reaches for me.
"Don't!" I flinch away. Not because I'm afraid. Because I want him to touch me. Want him to hold me while covered in blood, want him to fuck me right here among the bodies, want him to make me forget everything except the safety of being owned by someone scarier than my nightmares.
I'm broken. I can't be here anymore.
"He'll come for you now," Luca says. "But he has no protection. No barriers. Just him."
"And you." The words escape before I can stop them. "He has to get through you."
Something flashes in those pale eyes: possession so absolute it makes me step back.
I run then. Past more bodies, past evidence of systematic elimination, my heels slipping in blood I try not to think about. My car starts immediately, and I drive away from the massacre, away from what Luca has done for me.
The tears come then, hot and bitter, not because I'm horrified but because I'm not horrified enough. The girl I used to be would be calling 911, would be vomiting in disgust, would be running to her father.
Instead, I'm pulling over on a dark side street because my hands won't stop shaking, but I don't think it's from fear. My thighs clench in need.
I'm corrupted. I need help. And the first step to recovery has to be running as far away as possible from Luca Rosetti.
21 - Luca
The bodies between us might as well be a wall between Faith and the rest of her life. I watch her stumble toward her car, each step taking her further from what she just witnessed, from what I’ve done in her name. My legs lock in place, every muscle screaming to chase, to catch, to explain.
Her hands shake so violently she drops her keys twice before managing the lock. The sound of metal hitting concrete echoes across the empty lot. I take one step forward, then force myself to stop.
If you chase now, she runs forever.
The logic barely holds against instinct. My body vibrates with the need to pursue, to pin her against that car and make her understand that every death, every scream I extracted, was for her protection. But her face when she looked at me across the compound, the pure horror mixing with something worse: recognition. She saw what I really am. Not the man who teaches traumatized children self-defense. Not the protector who sharpens her knives. The demon who paints walls with blood and calls it love.
Her taillights vanish around the corner, red bleeding into darkness, as the cleanup van arrives. I stand frozen in Neumann's driveway, arms hanging useless at my sides. The November wind cuts through my blood-soaked shirt, the stench of copper and gunpowder clinging to me like a confession. Can't feel the cold. Can't feel anything except the wrongness of herdriving away, of letting her go, of not having her within my sight where I can ensure her safety.
This is what prey must feel like when they escape the wolf. Except I'm not supposed to be the prey. I'm supposed to hunt, catch, possess. The reversal makes my brain stutter, unable to process the new configuration where Faith exists outside my immediate control.
Three seconds. That's how long I hesitated when she ran. Three seconds of watching her flee instead of immediately following. The longest hesitation of my adult life, and it might have cost me everything.
Back inside, Nico's directing the cleanup crew. He takes one look at me and states, "You're compromised."
My hands shake as I help move bodies, fingers trembling against cooling flesh. The tremor is slight but persistent, like my nervous system is rejecting what just happened. Faith running. Faith leaving. Faith looking at me like I'm exactly what I've always claimed to be: a monster.
"She'll come back," Nico says, hefting a body over his shoulder. "They always do once they calm down."
But Faith isn't "they." She's not some traumatized civilian who'll rationalize this, who'll convince herself it was necessary. She saw clearly. The community center was performance, careful choreography designed to seem human. This, a dozen corpses systematically executed, this is truth.
